New York City Councilwoman Margaret Chin wants to make it a crime to buy counterfeit handbags in Chinatown.

The bill would slap buyers with a maximum $1,000 fine and up to one year in prison.

The purpose of the legislation is to lessen the demand for the fake designer goods including Gucci, Prada and Chanel knock off purses.

"We want a deterrent. We want them (visitors) to seek out the good things we have. We just have to put a stop to it," Chin said in an interview on Good Day New York.

Jailing them and fining them a thousand dollars sounds like the perfect solution.

Knockoffs are perfectly legitimate copies of premium goods manufactured with cheaper materials to create a lower cost end product. Creating a knockoff does not deprive the initial creator of a good of their product, it merely creates a lower cost imitation good.

The value of the knockoff is in no way equal to the original product so long as it's made with worse materials and lesser craftsmanship, therefor it should not be a threat to the original producer's business. The original producer always has the option to produce poor quality knockoffs of their own products, they choose not to because they feel they can make more money producing higher quality goods which they sell for a premium.

Far from further criminalizing knockoffs, they should be decriminalized entirely. If we need someone to fill the jails lets start with politicians like Margaret Chin.
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Chris runs the website InformationLiberation.com, you can read more of his writings here. Follow infolib on twitter here.